Nocturne
by Fortissimo63
Summary: Strange, twisted romance and hormones coupled with political scandal. Fudge is facing arrest and a coup, Death Eaters are being captured and interrogated. Harry's sixth year is looking to be a very strange one indeed. (Rated R for LATER chapters.)


------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Nocturne -- Chapter I  
  
------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
There was a stranger at breakfast.  
  
It was always the case that there would be a different head count   
  
in the morning than there had been the night before, but usually, the   
  
people that showed up at random moments were people Harry'd seen before.  
  
Harry'd never seen this man before, and this wasn't a guy someone   
  
could forget. He was distinct in features, with very pale skin and   
  
large, expressive black eyes and high cheekbones and that mysterious   
  
wind-swept jet hair (not unlike Harry's, come to think of it.)  
  
His name was Karl Wagner. Karl with a K, Wagner pronounced   
  
"Vagner." German, then? Harry thought, and was mildly horrified to   
  
realize he'd said it out loud. People weren't generally forgiving about   
  
jabs at their nationality.  
  
Evidently, Karl wasn't one to get offended in that respect. "Well,   
  
yeah," he said, smooth as anything.  
  
Harry shook his hand and sat opposite Hermione, who was trying to   
  
be discreet by sliding oblique glances Karl's way. "Nice try," he said   
  
softly to her, and Hermione looked up at him as though seeing him for   
  
the first time.  
  
"Oh, good morning," she said, passing him a plate of buttered   
  
toast. "Sleep well?"  
  
"I guess," Harry said, shrugging and eating his toast plain. "At   
  
least it wasn't really hot."  
  
"Oh, yeah..."  
  
Conversation was typically dull during the summer, when they all   
  
spent most of their time together doing very little. There wasn't much   
  
to say.   
  
Today I sat around and watched paintings give me the evil eye.   
  
Really? Me too.  
  
Not exactly scintillating by any stretch of the imagination (and   
  
Harry's could stretch pretty far.)  
  
Harry sighed. All due respect to the Order, really, but they   
  
didn't know how to liven things up. The best they ever did was when they   
  
discussed Quidditch, and that had been a one-time thing, and entirely   
  
too short-lived.  
  
This house wasn't helping matters. It rubbed all kinds of salt in   
  
his of wounds. He found a locket with Sirius and Regulus's faces in it.   
  
Regulus came out, but Sirius was currently sitting around Harry's neck,   
  
his photographic self napping in the darkness.  
  
A corny and trite keepsake? Maybe. Meaningful nonetheless, novelty   
  
bedamned.  
  
He just kind of wondered what possessed that awful Mrs. Black (the   
  
real one, that is) to keep the locket when she'd gone to great lengths   
  
to demolish every other conceivable memory of Sirius all that time ago.  
  
"Are you a part of the Order?" Harry asked Karl.  
  
Karl swallowed before responding. "Not exactly," he said, his   
  
accent unmistakably German, "but I'm going to be your new Defence   
  
Against the Dark Arts teacher."  
  
Funny. Seemed to Harry like he'd be a practitioner of the Dark   
  
Arts... but then, Harry had once thought the same of Sirius. Looks were   
  
oftentimes deceiving, something Harry suspected was just a cruel way of   
  
making life more difficult for them and more interesting for whatever   
  
deity might exist.  
  
"Will you last more than a year?"  
  
"Depends upon how much I like you." Karl seemed deadly serious for   
  
a second as he drank something that looked like wine (how European, wine   
  
for breakfast), but he smiled as he swallowed. "Actually, it depends   
  
upon Nachtmagicke, and whether or not they'll let me go for more than a   
  
year."  
  
"Nachtmagicke?" said Ron, who had, thus far, been utterly silent.   
  
"I've heard of it."  
  
"Oh, I'm sure you have."  
  
"I haven't," said Harry, looking to Ron for help.  
  
"Nachtmagicke is the wizarding school in Hamburg, Germany," said   
  
Hermione. "It was one of the first in existence, built simultaneously   
  
with two others."  
  
"No kidding?"  
  
No one refuted Hermione Granger. Harry had come to the conclusion   
  
that everyone either agreed with her all the time, or just didn't feel   
  
like disagreeing, because Hermione wouldn't accept anything that didn't   
  
have a basis in pure fact and hard, cold proof. It would be a waste of   
  
time and oxygen to suggest that, for instance, Nachtmagicke was built   
  
simultaneously with three schools, or something equally frivolous.  
  
Harry smiled at her. Of course, she smiled back. She always smiled   
  
back.  
  
Molly Weasley handed him a plate loaded with food of varying   
  
types. Eggs, toast, bacon... all in vast quantities, in typical Molly   
  
fashion. She seemed perpetually under the impression that Harry had ten   
  
years of catching up to do by way of nutrition. He noticed that she   
  
didn't give anyone else nearly that much.  
  
There was a strange tendency in Molly, in that she seemed to make   
  
more of an effort to mother Harry than to mother her own kids. She   
  
probably just surmised the truth early on, that her own kids would   
  
appreciate it a lot less (look at Ginny, for example, who was already   
  
shirking her mother's dutiful affections on a regular basis), and Harry   
  
would appreciate it a lot more, given that his own guardians lacked a   
  
certain loving quality towards people in general, most notably towards   
  
him.  
  
"Thanks, Mrs. Weasley," Harry said to Molly, who smiled and gave   
  
Ron - who hadn't thanked her for his breakfast in a good ten years, much   
  
less this morning - a powerfully judgmental look.  
  
Ron either didn't notice, or noticed it often enough that it was   
  
commonplace. Or he just didn't care.  
  
"Ron," said Molly suddenly, "did you bring your broomstick to the   
  
breakfast table?"  
  
"Yeah," said Ron. "It needed to be patched up a bit."  
  
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Weasley, striding over and taking the broom   
  
from him. "Have breakfast first. Then do this- and certainly not on a   
  
surface where everyone eats!"  
  
"Ah, Mum," said Ron, but it ceased to be a negotiable thing - if,   
  
in fact, it ever had been. He ate his toast quickly and fled the table   
  
to go out on the back porch, broom in hand.  
  
Hermione smiled at the table.  
  
"Harry," said Karl, down the table, "you play Quidditch, I hear?"  
  
"Yeah," said Harry.  
  
"Are you any good?"  
  
"Errrr..."  
  
Hermione, who had a problem with false modesty, pushed her plate   
  
forward and her chair backward, stating almost high-handedly, "Harry,   
  
you know you are, why the pretences?"  
  
Harry glanced at her, then at Karl, who asked what position he   
  
played.  
  
"Seeker," said Harry.  
  
"Nimbus?"  
  
"Firebolt."  
  
"Really!"  
  
Molly waited for a pause in this pseudo-conversation and handed   
  
Harry an envelope. "Letters came this morning," she said, "I think it's   
  
best if we head down to Diagon Alley this week."  
  
Harry opened the envelope and pulled the papers out, glancing them   
  
over. Typical, standard, stupid stuff... Dear Mr. Potter.... sixth   
  
year... blablabla... Hogsmeade... blablabla-  
  
"Oh," he said suddenly, "Hogsmeade."  
  
"What about it?" asked Molly.  
  
"Who..." Gulp, calm down, Harry, it's not that big a deal...   
  
"Who'll sign the slip?"  
  
Molly looked over his shoulder, confused at first, but she caught   
  
on and bit her lower lip pensively. She'd come to the same bitter   
  
conclusion Harry had. "Oh, I'm sure Dumbledore will let you go, anyway,"   
  
she said, not willing to put her conclusion into words.  
  
Sure enough, once Harry had flipped to the Hogsmeade permission   
  
form, Dumbledore had already put his signature to it in his typically   
  
colourful fashion that took up half a sheet for the A and the D alone.   
  
"That was nice," Harry said. He tried not to sound forlorn about the  
  
another ruthless reminder that Sirius had been... well, KIA. He put the   
  
slip and annual letter aside and gave the book list a once-over.  
  
If there could ever be such a thing, this was looking to be a   
  
rather normal year.  
  
But then, how can you be sure? Harry ruminated. After all,   
  
wasn't like any previous year had been a model of normalcy, so by that   
  
measure, did that mean a normal year would actually be a chaotic one?  
  
So maybe "normal" wasn't the word for it. "Uncharacteristically   
  
tranquil," more like.  
  
---  
  
That afternoon, Harry, Ron, the twins, Bill, and Ginny tried to   
  
have a low-flying pseudo-Quidditch game. Ginny held her own, but was   
  
having trouble doing so; despite her sensibly boyish mentality about the   
  
game, she simply couldn't bring herself to play dirty like the "real"   
  
boys did. For instance, at one point, when Ron caught one of the   
  
enchanted golf balls, George gnawed on his wrist until he let go, at   
  
which point, Fred caught it and scored.  
  
It wasn't like it was a real game, anyway, because how real could   
  
it be with Muggle balls and toes brushing the grass?  
  
What Harry really wanted to do was fly up, up, up... into outer   
  
space, or at least as far as he could go before the altitude hit him. In   
  
actuality, he couldn't rise above the trees. The enchantments on the   
  
property could only do so much.  
  
In the end, the team comprised of Fred, George, and Bill won, more   
  
for their creative rule-breaking than for skill, and also for the fact   
  
that Harry and Ron were a player short after Ginny decided it was just   
  
too infantile for her to deal with, and she joined Hermione on the back   
  
porch.  
  
Eventually they all huddled on the back porch, five-sevenths of   
  
them sweating like mad, and just talked. Back to talking, something they   
  
all were growing tired of, because there was just nothing to talk about.  
  
Then Molly stepped out with the Daily Prophet in hand.  
  
"What is it?" Bill asked.  
  
No one could quite tell if she was happy or frightened. It might   
  
have been a bit of both.  
  
"Here," she said, handing it to Bill.  
  
Bill scanned it without the slightest fluctuation in mannerism,   
  
until he reached the end of the article. "Shit," he said.  
  
"BILL."  
  
"Sorry, Mum..."  
  
Fred nudged Bill's chair. Everyone was about as impatient as he   
  
was, but no one was brash enough to go about quelling their anxiety in   
  
quite the same way. "Bill, out with it."  
  
Bill grinned. "Get a load of this, guys. Fudge was arrested." 


End file.
